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Remember when getting ripped referred to being under the influence? Well, it still does, except now the influence is exercise machines, not drugs. These mags will tell you more.

The comic book superhero Wolverine may have started life as a frail boy, but, hey, so did Hugh Jackman, whose ripped physique gracing the cover of Muscle & Fitness magazine owes to his role first playing the mutant X-man 13 years ago. You, too, can become such a superhero seems to be the mag’s message, with ads for just about every protein powder on the market — not to mention “legal” anabolic steroids. To us, some of the muscle men appear almost as freakish as Wolverine, but at least the mag also offers what are now standard healthy eating tips (almonds, Greek yogurt, fish oil) as well as a “how-to” on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous bicep “concentration curls.”

Muscular Development magazine is not for anyone not 100 percent committed to bodybuilding. Most people who look through these pages are going to ask, “Why?” How do men do this to themselves, and why do they want to be so freakishly large? It is a level of fitness that must blow well past addiction and compulsion. This cover goes to Mamdouh Elssbiay, a newcomer to the sport of flexing. The magazine reveals a whole culture of bodybuilding of which most people are blissfully unaware. But somewhere a man is working on muscles you didn’t know existed and figuring out some pose that flexes it best.

“Other than some lower-rung distance runners, I can’t recall even one single world-class athlete who was a legitimate vegetarian in his prime,” writes Flex columnist Carlon Colker, MD, FACN, who is pictured wolfing down a beef salad with his cheeks bulging like his biceps. Well, a quick Google search turns up Carl Lewis saying, “My best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.” And there’s Dave Scott, who won six of his record string of world Ironman championships as a vegetarian. But granted, it’s up to debate whether Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Mike Tyson or five-time Mr. Universe winner Bill Pearl were in their prime while vegetarians.

Dedicated to turning your weak, puny fleshy mass into a veiny muscle-bound specimen? Then FitnessRx for Men is the magazine for you. Only don’t expect to find unbiased perspectives or particularly insightful articles. The male-focused glossy led by Editor-in-Chief Steve Blechman comes off like a wide-ranging promotional ad for a bevy of borderline steroid-like products and fails to offer any critical analysis of the workout regimens promoted in its features.

There’s a certain inevitability about this week’s brilliant New Yorker cover, which depicts a King Kong-size Anthony Weiner straddling the Empire State Building, snapping pics of its pointy top with his iPhone. Inside, a “Talk of the Town” piece profiles Chirlane McCray, wife of competing mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. “I cannot imagine going through something like that,” McCray says, asked about the plight of Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin. That’s despite McCray’s history of private and public struggles against racial and sexual discrimination, including childhood neighbors who circulated a petition that her African-American family be barred from a Massachusetts suburb. Yeesh.

Time profiles Ibrahim al-Asiri, the “underwear bomber” terrorist who has become the Obama Administration’s top target. The Saudi al Qaeda operative has been thwarted in his three most notorious efforts to blow up a plane or politician with a pair of explosive jockey shorts (most notably, the Christmas 2009 attempt by a Nigerian radical who failed to fully ignite his briefs on a flight to Detroit). Nevertheless, intelligence officials note his ingenious devices, which also have been encased in ink jet printers, have escaped the detection of inspectors and bomb-sniffing dogs. “Al-Asiri’s most dangerous creation ultimately may not be a bomb but other bomb makers,” Time reports.